A "DANGEROUS" building where youngsters were spotted “dicing with death” is set to be demolished.
Southend Council has published an advert for a £200,000 contract to demolish the Avro and Viking Centre in Eastwood, close to Southend Airport.
Earlier this year, fears were raised after youngsters were “dicing with death” having been spotted running on the roof the building that could “collapse at any time”.
The building, in Avro Road, was deemed unsafe because of asbestos and RAAC crumbling concrete.
This latest incident followed a series of break-ins and antisocial behaviour on the site, which was previously a day-care service for adults with profound mental health and learning disabilities.
At the time, Lydia Hyde, the Labour councillor for St Laurence ward, called for the building to be demolished urgently.
Southend Council is now advertising a £200,000 contract to secure a contractor who will demolish the unsafe building.
Ms Hyde said: “With the Avro and Viking Centre, it is a property that is owned by the council but was leased out formally. However, they vacated the building a while back.
“So as it was vacant, the council took opportunity to go and access the building which was at the time of the Raac crisis.
“The assessment found a considerable amount of Raac and also areas of asbestos so we deemed that it wasn’t long-term structurally sound.
“It wasn’t viable to keep the building or spend the amount of money needed to bring it up to specification. It needs to come down. In recent moments, we have also had the issues of people break in, and getting on the roof, which is a big concern. So, I am extremely pleased to see the order to get contractors to come and demolish it.
“Hopefully, we can get that done as soon as possible.”
The building is no longer in use after the day-care service for adults relocated.
Ms Hyde said a decision has yet to be made on how the space will be utilised once the building has been demolished.
She added: “There is no decision on the space at the moment. We need to speak to residents as we don’t want to put up something that just wouldn’t work with area as it is quite residential. So we need to think about what would work there. But for now we aren’t in a rush to do something with land, it is important to begin with to just make the area safe.”
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